North Korea’s “US Mainland Strike Plan” revealed

The deranged lunatics who run North Korea decided to emphasize their latest round of saber-rattling by releasing a photo of leader Kim Jong-un signing the orders to prepare for an attack on the United States, flanked by a clown car’s worth of his top military brass. You can see the image above.

The UK Telegraphnoticed that if you look carefully at the maps on the wall behind Kim, you can see that one of them is marked “US Mainland Strike Plan,” and it shows missiles fired from North Korea striking Hawaii, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and… Austin, Texas. What did Austin do to get on the target list? Or is that the sort of question one is not supposed to bother asking psychopathic nutjobs while they play dress-up?

Their North American missile strike threats might be a sick fantasy, but the Norks have plenty of weapons that can threaten South Korea, and they’ve been brought to the highest state of military readiness:

The meeting of the Pyongyang’s senior military leaders was called after two US B2 bombers, flying out of bases in Missouri, carried out simulated bombing raids on North Korean targets on an island off the coast of South Korea.

“He finally signed the plan on technical preparations of strategic rockets, ordering them to be on standby to fire so that they may strike any time the US mainland, its military bases in the operational theatres in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in South Korea,” the state-run KCNA news agency reported.

It added that the B2 test flights demonstrated Washington’s “hostile intent” and said the “reckless” act had gone “beyond the phase of threat and blackmail.”

The North’s military was placed on its highest alert level earlier this week and a hotline link with the South Korean military was severed.

North Korea has also cut the mobile Internet link for foreign visitors, only weeks after the 3G service was introduced.

As though visiting North Korea wasn’t already a dreary prospect! Now you can’t even cheer yourself up by downloading “Fruit Ninja” for your smartphone.

Experts say this charming, heavily-armed communist basket case doesn’t have the technology to put nuclear warheads on its long-range missiles yet, or target them across global distances with any sort of accuracy. Some believe the latest round of bluster will be the prelude to a new missile test, or other act of low-level provocation. Testing an intercontinental ballistic missile would be a violation of sanctions imposed by the United States, but of course the North Koreans’ low opinion of such sanctions is behind all this tension. According to an article in the New York Times, the Chinese and Russians are worried about the situation:

China’s Foreign Ministry reiterated its calls for restraint. Russia was more explicit, with its foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, telling reporters in Moscow that he was increasingly concerned. “The situation could simply get out of control, it is slipping toward the spiral of a vicious cycle,” The Associated Press quoted Mr. Lavrov as saying.

[…] Although North Korea had traditionally issued strident threats and stirred up fears of American invasion during previous joint American-South Korean military drills, Mr. Kim has been far more aggressive in issuing such threats personally than his late father, Kim Jong-il, was. Unlike his father, who had expanded his power base from his youth, Mr. Kim was catapulted into top leadership after his father’s sudden death in 2011 and must build his credentials as head of his “military-first” government, South Korean analysts and officials said.

Hours after Mr. Kim’s call to arms, thousands of North Koreans turned out for a 90-minute mass rally at the main square in Pyongyang, chanting “Death to the U.S. imperialists” and “Sweep away the U.S. aggressors,” according to The Associated Press, which has a bureau in Pyongyang. Soldiers and students marched through downtown Pyongyang.

For what it’s worth, Joint Chiefs chairman General Martin E. Dempsey said the point of those B-2 stealth bomber flights was not to rattle the Norks, but rather to “assure our allies that they can count on us to be prepared and to help them deter conflict.” But it might be helpful if the stooges posing for photos with Lil’ Kim, while he pretends to sign death warrants for distant cities, pondered that if this situation escalates out of control, they might learn just how precise American targeting is.